Last week the Bank of England took time out from fumbling British monetary policy to announce that the next set of bank notes it issues won’t feature portraits of leading political, scientific and artistic figures from Britain’s past. Instead of Jane Austen (the renowned 19th-century novelist), J.M.W. Turner (the 19th-century painter), Alan Turing (the 20th-century computer scientist) and Churchill, who now grace the reverse of the side featuring the monarch, there will in future be a menagerie of yet unidentified British fauna.